One for every day of the week

Sunday Cook Off : Homemade Pizza With Pancetta and Grilled Vegetables

Inordinately proud

This week I decided to put to use the breadmaker that has been sat in my cupboard collecting dust ever since I inherited it from my mother’s clean out. So, baby steps, I decided to make some pizza dough – not too time consuming or complicated, not to mention incredibly tasty.

I know there are recipes out there for making your own pizza dough by hand, but I’ve yet to try any so I won’t recommend a specific one. I’m sure that Google can help you there.

As a complete novice I wasn’t exactly sure of the procedure of how to manage the dough once it’s ready, other than what I’ve seen on ‘I Love Lucy’. So I squidged the dough out into a roughly circular shape to the size that I wanted my pizza to be, and then pinched in the edges to create a bit of a crust. In hindsight, I could have squidged a lot more and still would have been left with a (much larger) deep dish but hey, that’s what experimentation is for! One tip I did make use of was adding polenta instead of flour to shape my dough to give it the gritty kind of texture that I love in the classic takeaway.

For the toppings I spread some tomato puree over the dough and add some grilled up pancetta and mixed vegetables – namely red onion, sweet pepper and tomatoes – then added in a quite frankly excessive amount of mozzarella and mascarpone. It’s a weakness. I’m getting help.

Then I put it onto a flat baking tray and left it in an oven preheated to about 180* for around 15 minutes. Each oven is different and everyone prefers their pizza to taste a certain way, so just keep checking on it until you think it’s ready and then tuck in.

This week’s cook off wasn’t particularly scientific or accurate, but boy was it successful (and tasty!), so why not try a bit of experimentation once in while? Life is so much more exciting that way.